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Research: Rice professor reports on the impact of personalized health care marketing

A Rice Business Professor shows how tailored, personalized health care marketing works better to convince at-risk patients to get screening for liver cancer. Photo via Getty Images

Amazon is famous for targeted marketing that approaches customers based on their unique needs. Like other successful businesses, such as Netflix, the company taps into machine learning, which uses customer data to understand their behavior.

Hospitals and medical centers rely on marketing too, investing heavily in direct-to-patient outreach to urge at-risk people to get regular screenings. Johns Hopkins Hospital's cancer center, for example, uses emails, letters, seminars and community events to encourage patients to get screened for potential cancer. The high cost of cancer treatment makes this effort worth it: research shows regular screenings help with early detection, leading to more cost-effective treatments and better prognoses.

But hospitals can – and must – improve their outcomes much more, by melding this essential outreach with individually tailored communications based on machine-learning insights.

In an award-winning paper, Rice Business Professor Vikas Mittal and colleagues developed new algorithms indicating that targeted, personalized outreach can increase screenings among at-risk patients. "Outreach marketing" – including sending informational letters and talking to patients about potential barriers to screening – was indeed a powerful motivator for patients to get screened, ultimately lowering health care costs for patient and hospital. But patients with different characteristics, Mittal's team found, responded differently to marketing interventions. When it came to marketing campaigns for cancer screening prevention, one-size-fits-all outreach efforts were neither effective nor economical. Personalized marketing works better for preventing cancer.

To conduct their research, the researchers randomly divided 1,800 patients at UT Southwestern Medical System at risk for hepatocellular carcinoma – the most common type of primary liver cancer – into three groups – usual care, outreach alone, and patient navigation, which includes help such as follow-up calls, motivational messages and assistance spotting specific barriers. They followed each group to see if patients scheduled an MRI or CT scan within six months, from 6-12 months and from 12-18 months.

The first group was asked to receive a screening during their doctors' visits and wasn't contacted after that. The second group received a one-page letter in the mail, then staff called patients who didn't schedule a screening. The third group receiving patient navigation got the same treatment as the second group supplemented with phone calls designed to identify potential barriers, which they used to give customized motivational messages encourage coming in for a screening.

The researchers used patient data from medical records, including patients' age, gender, ethnicity, income, commute time, health status, how often they received healthcare services, whether or not they had insurance and how populated their neighborhoods were.

Following traditional methods, Mittal's team found that the patients who got a letter and call were 10-20% more likely to complete a screening, while those who got the customized motivational messages were 13-24% more likely to schedule their screening. But this is where traditional medical research stops, without asking a crucial question: Within each group, such as those of the 600 patients receiving patient navigation, could screening rates differ based on patients' individual characteristics?

In past research, everyone receiving the same stimulus is presumed to respond the same way. There was no statistical technique to separately estimate the responsiveness of patients with different characteristics. Mittal's team solved this problem by using a machine learning technique called causal forests.

By using "causal forests" to quantify how each of the three marketing approaches could be applied to different patients, Mittal's team found, improved returns on the traditional approach by a remarkable 74-96% – or by $1.6 million to $2 million.

Using traditional methods, physicians would have concluded that every patient should get patient navigation because it was a more intensive marketing approach. The causal forest method showed otherwise: there are small groups of patients with unique characteristics who respond best to specific types of overtures. Minority women in good health who had insurance, visited the doctor often and lived close to clinics in more populated neighborhoods responded especially well to all three types of outreach interventions. Younger patients with long commutes who live in neighborhoods with more public insurance coverage embraced the second type of intervention, outreach alone. And older patients in higher-income neighborhoods favored the patient-navigation approach.

The stakes for common marketing practices like "AB testing" could not be higher. In AB testing, marketers run randomized experiments such as showing ads to some people and not to others. If those seeing an ad, on average, buy more, the conclusion is to blanket the market with ads. But AB testing ignores the fundamental idea that customers exposed to an ad might buy differently in response to an ad based on their individual characteristics. In fact, research shows, many customers seeing a non-tailored ad will buy less than those not seeing an ad.

Personalized marketing can uncover these differences and substantially increase the return on marketing investments in many settings such as retail and ecommerce, services marketing, business-to-business marketing and brand management. Healthcare companies should consider dedicating more resources to machine learning, which can power data-driven patient-centric outreach programs. Because individual health is a civic good, policy makers and organizations need to support these personalized outreach programs.

As for patients themselves, giving detailed personal data to a doctor or receiving highly personalized, unsolicited phone calls legitimately can seem like an invasion of privacy. But Mittal's research shows, it measurably has the potential to save your life.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom and is based on research from Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at the Jones Graduate School of Business.

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Building Houston

 
 

Check out this curated list of innovation events in Houston for April. Photo via Getty Images

It's time to look at what's on the agenda for April for Houston innovators — from pitch competitions to networking events.

Here's a roundup of events not to miss this month. Mark your calendars and register accordingly.

Note: This post might be updated to add more events.

April 4 — A.I. Digital and the Future of Energy

In the latest installment of UH Energy's "Critical Issues in Energy" Symposium Series, the speakers will take a deeper dive into the role of A.l. within the energy marketplace, specifically with what is being done with A.I. and what is capable of being done. In addition to this pivotal look at one crucial aspect of the energy transition, attendees will be afforded networking opportunities with speakers and distinguished guests, and food/refreshments will be provided.

The event is Tuesday, April 4, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, at the University of Houston. Click here to register.

April 5 — Creating & Sustaining Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Join us for a fireside chat discussing the growth of entrepreneurship & a panel on demystifying the patent process.

The event is Wednesday, April 5, from 9 to 11:30 am, at the Ion. Click here to register.

April 5 — HAN Angel Academy

Learn angel investing best practices from Capital Factory co-founder and chairman, Gordon Daugherty in a half-day bootcamp format for accredited investors.

The event is Wednesday, April 5, from 11 am to 4 pm, at Rice University - Shell Auditorium. Click here to register.

April 11 — Future of Health Care

The Greater Houston Partnership's inaugural Future of Health Care event highlights one of the region's major industry sectors driven by world-class institutions and professional talent.

The event is Wednesday, April 11, from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm, at the Royal Sonesta. Click here to register.

April 11 — Idea to Impact: Navigating the Challenges to Commercializing University Discoveries

Amazing discoveries are made in university labs every day, yet most of them never develop into widely accessible commercial products. Why? And what can universities do to change that? As part of Rice University's "Betterment of the World" Scientia Lecture Series, join Rice Business on April 11 at 4 pm virtually or in person (Shell Auditorium, McNair Hall) to hear Yael Hochberg, Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Jones Graduate School of Business, as she discusses the challenges in commercializing university research discoveries.

The event is Wednesday, April 11, from 4 to 5 pm, at Rice University and online. Click here to register.

April 11 — Greentown Houston Climatetech Career Fair 2023

Greentown Labs and ALLY Energy welcomes all professionals, students, and soon-to-be graduates to join us for the Greentown Houston Career Fair, which focuses on connecting professionals directly with Greentown Houston’ network of founders, CEOs, and cutting-edge climatetech startups looking for bright and eager talent.

The event is Tuesday, April 11, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, at Greentown Houston. Click here to register.

April 15 — Earth Day Clothing Swap Party with Sustainable Fashion & Earth Month HTX

A clothing swap is a fun, alternative solution to thrift shopping or secondhand fashion that allows you to clean out the clothes you no longer wear and in return bring home new additions to your closet - all for free and hosted by Houston startup RESTATEMENT.

The event is Saturday, April 15, from noon to 5 pm, at Patterson Park. Click here to register.

April 17-18 — AI Powered Renewable Energy Workshop

AI Houston Institute of Rice University in partnership with Ion is getting together experts from academia and industry working on the application of artificial intelligence in solving some of the most complex challenges facing the Energy industry as it transitions into alternative sources of energy that are green and sustainable.

The event is Monday, April 17, to Tuesday, April 18, at the Ion. Click here to register.

April 19 — Investor Studio Series: Dream Big Ventures x Ion x Mendoza Ventures

Underrepresented founders face a lot of barriers, including rarely seeing VC dollars. However, Dream Big Ventures and Mendoza Ventures are looking to change those statistics to help diverse founders succeed. Join Dream Big Ventures Founder and CEO Staci LaToison, and Mendoza Ventures Co-Founders Senofer Mendoza and Adrian Mendoza, as they discuss the growth of women and Latinas in Fintech, AI, and Cybersecurity in this fireside chat.

The event is Wednesday, April 19, from 5 to 7 pm, at the Ion. Click here to register.

April 19 — The H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge Championships

Join Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and support Rice University student ventures at the H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge (NRLC) Championships on Wednesday, April 19. Five student finalists will pitch their ventures to compete for the chance to win a share of $100,000 in equity-free funding.

The event is Wednesday, April 19, from 5:30 to 9 pm, at Rice University. Click here to register.

April 20 — Female Founders and Funders

Calling all rockstar female founders and investors in the Houston area. Mark your calendars for this month's Female Founders and Funders meetup. Coffee and breakfast is provided and the event is free to attend.

The event is Thursday, April 20, from 9 to 10 am, at Sesh Coworking. Click here to register.

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